Daily Dose

Zillow announced Friday that it expects to close the acquisition of Trulia by February 17, following the announcement of the conclusion of a Federal Trade Commission investigation. Zillow first announced its intention to acquire Trulia in July 2014 for $3.5 billion.

Counsel's Corner is an ongoing series in which DS News talks with default servicing attorneys around the country about the most pressing issues facing the default servicing industry. This installment features David Biderman, partner with Perkins Coie in the firm's Los Angeles and San Francisco offices.

During a hearing spread out over two days at the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on February 10 and 12, Committee chair Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) pointed out a “bipartisan understanding” that financial institutions need relief from perceived overregulation.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced Thursday that it has taken action against three mortgage lenders for falsely implying U.S. government endorsement of their products, according to an announcement from CFPB.

Residential mortgage servicing rights sales and valuation advisory services provider MountainView Servicing Group announced Thursday that it is acting as adviser for the sale of a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac portfolio with an unpaid principal balance (UPB) of about $3 billion.

While most Republican lawmakers grilled HUD Secretary Julián Castro on the recent lowering of the FHA mortgage insurance premiums and FHA's MMI Fund Wednesday during his testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, Representative Mia Love (R-Utah) opted to cover a different subject: defaults and their potentially negative effect on their respective neighborhoods.

A nationwide survey conducted by Auction.com, a leading online real estate marketplace, showed a continuation in January of a trend seen in the fourth quarter of 2014 – that of investors' preference to flip houses rather than rent them out. Even as the demand for rental housing has increased in most markets, investors continue to prefer to flip houses due to a recent combination of price appreciation and decreased inventory. About 50.2 percent of investors surveyed in January said they preferred to flip the homes they purchased,

REO sales posted the largest residential cash home sales share in November 2014 with more than 60 percent, according to CoreLogic's new cash sales data released on Wednesday.

In a speech at the Economic Club of New York in New York City on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher's reflections on his decade with the Fed included his insistence that monetary policy should not be politicized.

In its complaint, the firm alleges that HLSS, which deals in the acquisition of mortgage servicing assets, made misleading statements and failed to disclose to investors how much its own business depended on Ocwen's and the extent of Ocwen's troubles.